Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
My rating: 5 of 5 stars "Like an olive, fall when ripe, blessing nature." "The clapping of hands and the clapping of tongues is without value." Hey, that's the master of the Roman Empire talking to himself nearly 2000 years ago! And it wouldn't hurt us to read his Meditations today. Meditations is a collection of mostly Stoic precepts, reminders, reflections, and exhortations written by the Emperor Marcus Aurelius (161-180) to himself as a kind of philosophical self-help diary. Hence his enigmatic references here and there to things only he would know and his addressing himself as "you." (It's often been said that To Himself would be a more accurate title for the book). He never saw his writings as forming a single work that anyone would read. The 12 books into which his writings were arranged much later don't develop different ideas into an overall argument or narrative. Their purpose was to remind him during stressful times what is important. One gets the feeling that he wrote to preserve his equanimity or to brace up his spirit while dealing with rebellious barbarians, slimy politicians, disappointing offspring, or other burdens of rule. The precepts he repeats and rephrases with an almost desperate and mesmerizing preoccupation would, if followed, make one fulfilled and productive, a positive influence on one's community and world. I found many things that I should adopt to improve my life right now--like focusing my energies around a coherent goal instead of squandering them by listening to and reviewing an eclectic (if not random) host of audiobooks. Unfortunately, I probably will not have the strength of character. But the Emperor did cleanse and calm my soul. He gave me a set of reminders for a good and healthy life as a rational social being who lives on one small speck in a universe that is a single living organism in which everything is connected and everything changing. Be aware of what composes the universe and accept what the universe gives you. It’s not what happens to you but how you react to it that defines your life and character. Resentment, fear, anger, laziness, are self-inflicted. There’s only one task in life, and that is to get a grip on yourself. Live according to your rational soul as if each moment might be your last, without missing the past or fearing the future. I suspect that Whitman (full of the divine energy of the universe, rejecting only what insults his own soul) and Thoreau (simplify, simplify) would find Marcus Aurelius simpatico. And that Trump would not appreciate him saying, "Lying intentionally or unintentionally is impious, against nature." (Trump is in all ways the anti-Aurelius.) Some things are very much of Marcus Aurelius' specific time and place (like advising one to look on the beauty of one's slave boys with chaste eyes or reminding oneself "to be neither of the green nor of the blue party at the games in the Circus.") Some things, I'm not sure I agree with, like when he says we should live without passion as if alone on a mountain. But most things he says have universal and useful application to our own lives here and now. Like the following: --We are made for cooperation, like feet, like hands, like eyelids, like the rows of the upper and lower teeth. --Reverence and honor your own mind. --The best revenge is not to become like the one who has wronged you. --To accept it without arrogance, to let it go with indifference. --Have you ever seen a severed hand or foot? That's what we do to ourselves when we rebel against what happens to us. --For instance, when bread is baked some parts are split at the surface, and these parts which thus open, and have a certain fashion contrary to the purpose of the baker's art, are beautiful in a manner, and in a peculiar way excite a desire for eating. --You have embarked, you have made the voyage, you have come to the shore: get out. --Think continually how many physicians are dead after often contracting their eyebrows over the sick; and how many astrologers after predicting with great pretensions the deaths of others; and how many philosophers after endless discourses on death or immortality; how many heroes after killing thousands; and how many tyrants who have used their power over men's lives with terrible insolence as if they were immortal; and how many cities are entirely dead. . . . always observe how ephemeral and worthless human things are, and what was yesterday a little mucus to-morrow will be a mummy or ashes. Pass then through this little space of time conformably to nature, and end thy journey in content, just as an olive falls off when it is ripe, blessing nature who produced it, and thanking the tree on which it grew. Audiobook reader Duncan Steen's voice and manner are so appealing, so well attuned to Aurelius' words in the English translation (which seems like a modernized version of George Long's), that it is a pleasure to listen to this book. View all my reviews
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